


Welcome to the New Age

by chaoticmxinds



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Sharon Carter, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-08-14 21:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8030284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticmxinds/pseuds/chaoticmxinds
Summary: Sharon Carter: Agent of SHIELD, fake nurse, the first face to be seen by Captain America himself when he woke up from the ice, fought in the Battle of New York and Battle of Washington, CIA Agent, a legacy — the woman had a lot of labels in the past, but not many know who Sharon Carter really is. Here's the story told from her perspective.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it's been a while guys, I've lost the muse to continue with my other fic, so I'll have to put that on a pause for now, but I will eventually go back to finishing that fic again! Somehow I managed to come up with some ideas for this new fic while re-watching The Avengers the other day, told from Sharon's perspective since I'd love to see her to be a part of most of the events that occurred in the MCU. I'm really excited about this one so there's nothing better than to post the first chapter on Sharon Carter Appreciation Day. There will be no posting schedules unfortunately, since I'm just writing as the ideas came to mind. I hope you all enjoy this fic!

Sharon Carter was deep undercover when she discovered the news of the stolen Tesseract, although that was sooner than she expected to hear it. Especially when she received an unknown phone call in the middle of Europe and no one was supposed to know her location, or that number for that matter.

When her phone rang in the middle of the night, the blonde found herself staring at the small gadget and cutting the call immediately. One, she never liked to be interrupted when she was sleeping, and two, she never had any contact from anyone else unless it was anyone related to the target of her mission. But the strange phone call has caught enough of her attention for her to remain awake, unable to drift back to sleep again until she solved the mystery of who the caller was. Before she could even slip out of her bed, the sound of a piece of paper shuffling through her door made her grab the gun placed on her bedside table immediately, pointing it at the door as a white sheet of folded paper sat patiently by the hotel room door. Still wary and on guard, Sharon kept the gun pointed at the same location as she tiptoed carefully across the room, before snatching up the paper and left her door slightly ajar; her eyes swinging right to left at the empty corridor to search for the person responsible for leaving the note for her. Finding no luck at searching for any other movement but herself, the blonde retreated back into her room, before opening the note, brows furrowing at the words printed on it. 

_Would you trust someone named Benji to make a burger for you?_

Cryptic, but the note mentioned the twenty-four hours burger joint built around the corner to her hotel, and there was only a few people she could count on her hands that knew her love for burgers, and it was those people that she would deemed as trustworthy. Grumbling in annoyance to herself, she quickly changed out of her pyjamas and slipped into some comfortable and wore a cap to disguise herself, but she kept her gun close and slipped it inside her pants. Her senses were high on alert as she made her way to the burger joint, wary that this could be a trap. As she set foot through the doors, the smell of burgers hit her immediately, making her mouth water for a moment, before snapping back to scanning across the room for anything suspicious. It was then, in the corner of her eyes when she caught a flash of red hair, and she made her way over to the booth, sliding across the bench opposite the woman.

“Using my love for burgers to drag my ass out here, I see how it is,” She wrinkled her nose at the woman sat before her, rolling her eyes when she merely got a smirk in response. 

“You hung up on me, so I think I deserve to use _something_ against you, blondie.” The redhead arched a brow at her; a mask came over the woman for a moment when the waitress came over to take their orders. Sharon did the same by smiling politely at the other woman, ordering a bacon cheeseburger and a milkshake before Natasha doubled the order and turned back to her when the waitress left them alone once again.

“Seriously? Burger and milkshake at this time?” Natasha said with amusement, the corners of her lips tugged into a smirk. 

“I could say the same to you.” While Sharon didn’t mind talking about burgers any time of the day, she knew this must had been important, because SHIELD agents never interrupted an undercover op unless help was really needed, and she knew she had everything in control right now. Plus, Natasha hated burgers anyway, and she merely made the order to get rid of the waitress from eavesdropping in their conversation. The blonde gave her a shrug, before finally growing serious with her friend. “Nat, why are you here?”

“Nice to see you as well. I missed you too, Sharon.” The blonde couldn’t help but roll her eyes at her friend again, before leaning closer to the redhead as she did the same too. When the smile finally faded away, she could tell they were getting to serious business. “You’re dropping this mission, Fury’s order.”

Her brows furrowed with confusion. “I have everything in control here—”

“The Tesseract has been stolen,” Natasha cut her off. “By an Asgardian god that isn’t Thor. So Fury needs anyone level 6 or higher to report to him.”

“And he couldn’t have told me that personally?” She asked with annoyance, but she knew he must had his hands full right now. Sharon knew Nick Fury all the way before she joined SHIELD Academy, considering the fact that it was her Aunt Peggy that recruited him into the agency. He was almost family to her, and while she didn’t like anyone treated her any differently, she was pissed he had to drag her out of this mission when she spent months planning it. But orders were orders, and she had to follow them, and Natasha knew that, too.

Rolling her eyes at the question, Natasha continued. “Barton and several other agents are compromised,” Sharon’s head snapped up at the mention of Clint Barton, searching for any signs of worry on the woman’s face, but of course, she didn’t find any. Neither of them were particular good at expressing their feelings, Nat more so than she was sometimes. “Loki seemed to have the power to brainwash people as well, so we need to get the Tesseract back before this gets out of hand.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here, Nat.” She appreciated that her friend came here to deliver the news herself, but Natasha was capable of much more than that. They trained together during SHIELD academy, and their skill sets put together was almost undefeatable. Hence why they worked well as partners on some of their missions.

“Fury’s reactivating the Avengers initiative,” Sharon’s eyebrows shot upwards at her words. She was aware of the program, considering how Tony seemed to throw the file around like it wasn’t classified, which it was, by the way. It made her wish that he never knew that she was a SHIELD agent at times, but family was family, and they often shared most things as long as they didn’t interfere with their work. Although no one seemed to think too much about the Avengers initiative after the program was deactivated. “I’m on my way to recruit Banner, so I thought I’d bring the news to you along the way.”

“Dr. Banner? They don’t ever make it easy for you, do they?”

“As long as he doesn’t turn giant and green, I’m sure I’ll be fine.” She said with a shrug. “He said he needs as many agents on the helicarrier by Wednesday, and there’s a quinjet waiting for you three miles out from here. 

Sharon nodded at Natasha before smiling when the food was placed in front of her, mumbling a quick ‘thank you’ then diving into the fries as soon as the waitress turned her back on them. She could feel her friend’s gaze on her, but she took her time taking her first bite of the burger, before speaking up again with a dreaded thought hit her. “You’re not here to tell me that I have to escort someone back as well, right?”

“You mean Rogers?” She arched a brow with interest; Sharon noticed that her friend left her food untouched. “As much as I’d love to see you pretending to be a nurse again, no, Coulson got him and Stark covered.”

It wasn’t as though Sharon ever had a problem with Captain America or Steve Rogers, it was just the fact that her Aunt Peggy had a history with the man out of time, and Fury decided that it would be beneficial for her to be by his bedside when he woke up from the ice; apparently she was a friendly enough face to be around, especially for someone who woke up after being under for 70 years, which she definitely called bullshit on. Until today, she thought it was a terrible idea. Just because she had ‘Carter’ attached to her name, it didn’t mean Steve Rogers would warm up to her straight away, and she was proven correct when he stormed out of the made-up bedroom as soon as he opened his eyes to her. She was sure that the man wouldn’t even remember her face, but as a child and growing up, she always imagined meeting Captain America would be different, not her pretending to be someone, but she would’ve met him as Sharon Carter.

She ended up scoffing at Nat’s words, and then shook her head at her. “Why do you always think that I meant him?” She asked, pretending to be oblivious of the fact that Natasha was aware of how much she disliked talking about him. “Well, I don’t feel sorry for you anymore. Coulson has to drag Tony’s ass to SHIELD, he’s not going to make it easy for him.”

“You think I didn’t know that after pretending to be his secretary for about six months?” Natasha shook her head at the thought. Not everyone could deal with Tony Stark, especially if babysitting him was part of the job, too. Sometimes she really wondered how Pepper could cope with his antics without snapping at him already.

“Hey, I grew up with him. Give me a break.” She smirked, taking a sip of her strawberry milkshake. The lightheartedness of the conversation seemed to fade away when her mind drifted back to the current situation the agency was facing. If SHIELD was pulling any high level agents out of their current missions, and that someone could compromise a skilled agent like Barton, this must’ve been _really_ bad. “When do you need to leave?”

“As soon as possible, really. Last we’ve heard of Banner was that he was somewhere in India, and we need to get everyone on board quickly since we don’t know what Loki’s plans are,” She took a glance out of the window, before turning back to Sharon once again.

“Dragging everyone onto one helicarrier, that’s _totally_ a great idea,” The blonde rolled her eyes at the thought, mumbling to herself. “Well, I guess I should enjoy this while I can, the food isn’t so great onboard.” She sighed dramatically. “Do you think I’ll get to meet Thor this time?”

“Food and meeting Thor, you really need to sort out your priorities,” Natasha pushed her food towards her, and began to stand up and leave the booth. Shooting a last glance at Sharon, she could almost see the hint of a genuine smile on the redhead’s face, _almost_. “I’ll see you Wednesday, blondie.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” She gave a quick wave at her friend, before turning back to the food once again. Sharon better enjoyed the things she loved while she could; if this was as bad as she thought, fighting against a god with powers that no one really knew what he was capable of— _yet_. She had no idea when she would return to normality once again. But then, she was a Carter and worked for SHIELD, nothing was ever going to be normal for someone like her. 

After finishing off both hers and Natasha’s food, the thought of passing out on the double bed in her hotel room was so tempting then, but sleep wasn’t something she had a lot of whenever she was working, and that was pretty much most of the time since she entered SHIELD Academy. It didn’t take her more than an hour to pack everything in her room, since she always travelled light and bought anything that was needed when she settled in on any mission. Following the coordinates her friend gave her, she jumped into a taxi that dropped her off at a diner that was a mile out from the location of the quinjet, before walking the rest of the way to the destination. It was better to be safe than sorry, her aunt and SHIELD taught her well enough to know that she had to be aware of her surroundings at all times, and that only had gotten worse the longer she became a SHIELD agent. Even during her days off, she was still cautious of walking down the streets of Washington, D.C..

Considering the amount of food Sharon consumed earlier, they were almost burnt off by the time she reached the quinjet, hidden safely behind a sea of trees underneath the slowly brightening sky. “Agent 13,” The pilot greeted her. “I believe Agent Romanoff won’t be coming with us, so we’ll be heading to the helicarrier now.”

Sharon nodded in response to his words, although she paused for a moment when an idea came to mind; she knew clearly that the Director probably wouldn’t be pleased by this, but she didn’t know how long before this mission would end, and since she had a day to spare, she might as well made the most of it. “Actually,” She started, as the pilot began to descend from their location. “We’re making a detour before we head over there.” She said as she fastened her seatbelt in the co-pilot seat.

“But Director Fury said—”

“But nothing.” She shot him a glance before looking out of the window again. “I know what he said, I’ll deal with him when I see him. Last I've heard, we don't need to be there until Wednesday.” 

She could hear the faint and frustrated sigh from the pilot sitting next to her, but she chose to ignore it and inputted the coordinates of their next destination instead. “Where are we going, then?”

“We need to go to D.C., I have some errands to run before I go to work.”


	2. Chapter 2

Sharon slept throughout the entire flight back to D.C., which was exactly what she needed considering her sleep were sadly interrupted last night, and her supposedly running errands in the city meant that she probably wouldn’t catch much sleep in the next day.

Or however long she was needed on the helicarrier in the near future.

It was a tiny white lie that she was running errands in D.C., because her life had pretty much been packed into the same suitcase since she became a SHIELD Agent, carrying it around the world, to wherever her mission would take her. But it didn’t hurt to ever be too careful, even if sometimes that led to her having some trust issues around people. She was a superior over the pilot sitting next to her after all, he couldn’t question what her motives of being in the Capital, something which she was thankful for.

But if there was one person that would know immediately her intentions of taking a detour, that would be the director, Nick Fury.

It wasn’t like anyone could hide much from the man himself, anyway. There was a reason why he was given the task of overlooking the entire agency, that even her Aunt Peggy deemed that he was the man for the job. But there was only a few people in the agency knew her besides as Agent 13, and the heavy weight of the word Carter attached to her name. While Sharon didn’t actively hide her identity from the world, she didn’t try to make the effort to make the connection known to many people either. 

It was inevitable; he had to know every single agent coming into the agency. But Sharon knew the man long before she wanted to come a SHIELD Agent (even though that was also something inevitable considering she spent more time by her aunt’s side than she did with her parents). Hell, Nick even watched her grow into the woman today from the numerous of times he visited Aunt Peggy. He was almost like a parental figure to her even if she pretended that she wasn’t aware of his presence during her time at SHIELD Academy. One thing she was certainly grateful for though, was that he didn’t treat her any differently. The cool gaze he gave towards anyone else remained the same whenever they had any interactions at the Triskellion, everything remained strictly professional between them in their workplace.

Fury would probably give her shit for taking a detour, but he knew there was only one person Sharon would come here for: her Aunt Peggy.

She was grateful that Fury, along with Maria Hill helped to move Peggy into a safer facility when the Alzheimer’s seemed to occur more frequently. She would’ve asked her uncle and aunt to look after Peggy, but they couldn’t always travel back and forth all the time, so Sharon took it upon herself to look after her aunt. In a way, she did it because she was the only living blood relative she had left, but bigger part of her knew she had to be the one to take on this task since she was the woman who inspired her to pursue her passion. Without Aunt Peggy’s advice and encouragements, she wasn’t sure if she had the courage to go against her parents’ wishes to follow her aunt’s footstep. 

Sharon specifically made the pilot land in an abandon runway just outside of D.C. when he woke her up to announce that they were an hour away from their destination. She gave him the day off (even though she probably didn’t have the permission to do so, but she was his superior after all) before chaos would probably ensue when they arrived the helicarrier. After she finally parted from the pilot, she took a taxi into the city before renting a car to drive to the facility where Peggy resided in. She had made sure that no one could trace her from the runway to the facility, renting the vehicle in a different alias because her aunt and Fury would have expected her to always take precautions even for normal tasks like that.

As expected, the only cars she noticed parking there was the nurse’s and hers when she arrived after she confirmed her identity at the front gate. Luckily, her unexpected visit happened to be the same time when Aunt Peggy just had lunch and was still mildly energetic. But thankfully, currently she was having more good days than bad days right now.

How long that would last though, she had no idea. So Sharon needed to make sure that she visited whenever she could. 

“Aunt Peggy,” The blonde smiled at the sight of the older woman as she pushed the glass door open into the back garden, where Peggy was currently sitting on the wooden swing facing the sea of green in front of her. Her aunt looked at ease, peaceful, and unaware of the total chaos that could potentially at the agency, a place that was founded by the Carter woman in the first place. If anyone deserved some peace, it was her aunt. It was just a shame that she had to be in such condition to find the time to be relaxed.

Her stomach sank a little when Peggy turned to face her, confusion seemed to cross her eyes for a moment, before recognition dawned on her, and the familiar smile finally stretched across her features as her great niece approached her. 

Sharon would be in denial if she didn’t think that the Alzheimer’s was getting worse.

“Sharon, dear. I didn’t expect to see you today.” Peggy said as she pulled Sharon into a hug, before she took a seat on the swing beside her aunt.

 “Yeah, you know how busy work can get. I thought I’d come and visit before it gets busy again.” The blonde returned her smile as she shot a glance at the garden in front of her. She wondered for a moment if she could ever settle on anything as quiet and nice as this.

“Oh? Fury gave you a day off?” Her aunt grinned.

The comment made her laugh, because they both knew deep down hardly anyone could stay still once they committed to working for SHIELD. It was almost like a private joke shared between the two Carter women since Sharon became a SHIELD Agent. “Quite the opposite, actually. I have to report back to him tomorrow. I would tell you why but it’s—”

“Classified.” Peggy finished her sentence. “I understand, Sharon. Don’t worry. It sounds like it must be important though.” Sharon nodded. The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes, savouring the moment of peace while they still could, before her aunt broke the silence again. “Steve came to visit me last week.”

“That’s nice, I thought he might visit eventually.” Sharon responded almost robotically, like the response had been too well rehearsed. The sound of his name echoed in the air sent a jolt on unease to her stomach. Sharon was of course happy for Aunt Peggy considering their history between them, and she even idolised both her aunt and Captain America himself when she was younger, even more so when Peggy told her all the stories of her with the Commandos.

Aunt Peggy gave her a side of Steve Rogers that the world never got to see. So classified or not, it was only fair that the news came from Sharon. After all, she pretended to be his nurse for a short-lived time, right until he saw right past her cover. Plus, she wasn’t sure if having Captain America turning up to the facility would give her aunt _too_ much shock for one day. So it was better for her to break the news to her first. But now that he was alive and well again, she felt like she was intruding by talking about Steve Rogers with her aunt. That she shouldn’t interfere more into his life than she did already.

“It’s just so good…to see him again. I never thought I’d see him, alive and well, you know? I even thought you were joking with me when you told me he was alive after all this time.” Peggy shook her head, smiling fondly at the memory. “Have you met him yet?”

"You know I would never joke about something like that, Aunt Peggy," Her brows creased for a moment, mainly out of confusion since Sharon did mention before that they met in passing. Again, that was another small white lie, because otherwise the truth would’ve been classified information, even though her aunt had such a personal connection to Steve Rogers. 

At least her aunt remained strictly professional about not telling Steve that she had a niece working for SHIELD.

“Yeah,” She nodded, a weirdly false smile stretched across her features. She despised lying to her aunt, but she didn’t want to let her feel how uncomfortable she felt about this topic either. “Once. But we didn’t really speak. He was busy, you know, him being Captain America and everything.” 

“Oh, yes, but there’s so much more to him that just Captain America. I knew him as Steve Rogers and…” Sharon smiled despite the horrible feeling sitting at the pit of her stomach as her aunt dove into another story of Steve Rogers during the World War, one that she heard numerous of times, but she let her continue with the story anyway. The way that her eyes lit up as she told her story, the blonde just felt rude to interrupt her aunt to tell her that she heard of it already.

After the story, her aunt grew tired and retreated back to her bedroom, and Sharon sat by her side until she fell soundly asleep, before she spoke to the nurse briefly and left the facility. She always had mixed feelings every time she visited Peggy, mainly because she seemed to only get more forgetful with each visit, but also seeing her happy was all that mattered.

She just hoped it wouldn’t take her too long before she could visit her again. 

 

* * *

 

Sharon dropped off her rental car back in the city before heading to her favourite burger joint to pick up some dinner, before heading back to the quinjet since they were due to leave at midnight. She would’ve wanted to stay for longer, but the pilot seemed to be wary about going completely against Fury’s orders, so they came to a compromise with the detour. 

As if right on the dock, he arrived half an hour before they were due to set off, before he inputted the encrypted coordinates to the hellicarrier and they set off earlier than they supposed to. Neither of them really knew where the location of the hellicarrier was, and she probably assumed that Fury needed to keep that information as classified as possible. 

The journey to the destination was long, but thankfully quiet, something she needed before she joined the party of agents and superheroes that had already arrived and prepared for dispatch already. It took them several hours before they arrived, and the sun was already rising by the time they landed. Sharon mumbled a quick thanks to the pilot, before she was given instruction to leave her bags in her bunk and to change into her white tactical suit and report to Maria Hill.

Something about being asked to stay prepared during her whole stay on the hellicarrier was making her feeling apprehensive about this whole Tesseract situation already.

“Agent Hill, Director Fury.” Sharon said when she reached the main deck of the hellicarrier, unsurprised to find that Maria Hill was by Fury’s side.

“Agent 13,” Fury shot a glance at her. “I was about to send out a search party for you. It’s unlike you to be abusing your powers.” Sharon almost wanted to smirk at his comment, but she restrained herself from doing so, that would probably be borderline unprofessional.

“Sorry, sir. I was told that I wasn’t needed until Wednesday, which is today.” She answered, their eyes met in understanding for a moment, before he turned away once again. 

“Agent Hill will brief you on the situation, 13. That will be all now.” She merely nodded at his words, before she looked at Maria expectantly to fill her in as to why she was needed on the hellicarrier. The brunette cocked her head to one side towards the corridors, before Sharon followed suit and left the main deck.

Before Maria Hill could fit in a word though, the all too familiar voice came booming down the corridor. “Share-bear!”

Sharon couldn’t help but roll her eyes and groan, tempted to bury her face in her hand in embarrassment. If there was one person who could never maintain their professionalism, that would be Tony Stark. 

“Tony—” The man pulled her into a hug before he could say anything, before Sharon elbowed him in the stomach and pulled away from the embrace. “Ouch, what the hell, Sharon? You’re not embarrassed now, are you? What are you doing here anyway?”

“Embarrassed? Isn’t everyone embarrassed of you? I thought that was a known fact. I’m working, go annoy someone else.” She narrowed her eyes as she caught in her peripheral vision that infamous smirk was stretched across Maria’s features as she stood behind Tony. For someone who was known for being stoic, seeing that smirk in person was kind of terrifying. “And last time I checked, I still work for SHIELD. Which gives me all the reason as to why I’m here. So if you don’t mind—”

Sharon stopped in her tracks in shock when she turned to face Steve Rogers once again as his eyes widened in recognition, before what looked like anger seemed to cross his eyes.

As if today couldn’t get any worse.

“You’re the nurse.”

She shook her head at him; she wasn’t here to deal with any drama that Fury caused for making her cover as a nurse that merely happened a few months ago. 

If anything, she didn’t expect to see the man ever again.

“Sorry, wrong person. If you don’t mind, Agent Hill and I were just about to talk before we were _rudely_ interrupted.” She shot a glare at Tony, and didn’t even bother to look at Steve again. Meeting Maria’s eyes, she led her further through the hellicarrier, hopefully somewhere that she wouldn’t bump into any more unwanted surprise. 

It was a cowardly move, but surely they were all facing a more important matter than Sharon’s cover around Captain America.

Even if she was the first person he saw when he opened his eyes to the twenty-first century.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I suddenly had a burst of muse for this fic, and that's why I managed to update this. Since this is before the events of TWS, Aunt Peggy's condition was still relatively better during that time. Like I said, I will probably post whenever I have the muse to write, but I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!


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